


Five Times Rory Remembered Her First Love

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Five Times Rory Remembered Her First Love [1]
Category: Gilmore Girls, Supernatural
Genre: AU, Bodyswap, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-26 06:52:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6228256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rory's first boyfriend, Dean, had a charming smile and a black leather jacket, an affinity for cars, and vanished without a trace after she broke his heart. Sometimes, she remembers him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Rory Remembered Her First Love

1.

Rory shouldn’t have been surprised it was Paris’s idea to visit Madeleine and Louise out at Stanford for their Spring Break; now that Paris had a life counselor and was calmer thanks to the power of macaroni glue crafts, she looked upon her high school relationships with rather more fondness. It wasn’t a bad plan at all - they roadtripped out west together in Paris’s car, listening to the mix CD’s they’d made just for the occasion, and the trip was, for the most part, congenial. Stanford for Spring Break was an excellent idea, because unlike New Haven, it was warm and sunny, and Rory could actually break out her swimsuit. Paris’s life counselor hadn’t come along with them, and when Madeleine and Louise were their usual flighty, forgetful selves, waiting for half an hour just outside the campus cathedral turned Paris from cheerful to snappish very quickly.

Rory turned away when Paris went to leave her seventh angry voicemail on one of the girls’ phones. Palo Alto was beautiful, and the campus at Stanford was equally lovely. It wasn’t quite as old as Yale, but plenty of the buildings had that Spanish-influenced Mission architecture, and the adobe curves were gentle and soothing. This week was going to be wonderful. Rory smiled and spun around, arms wide, basking in the sun. Eventually she forced herself to stop, because she must have looked like a nutcase. She opened her eyes, and there, sprawled on the grass with a thick textbook across his knees, was none other than Dean Forester.

Impossible.

What was Dean doing at Stanford?

Rory swallowed hard. This was unbelievable. Dean had been smart, but not Stanford-smart, and he’d never shown much of an interest in college, just in cars and music. He’d left town abruptly in the middle of senior year, and Rory didn’t know if he’d even finished school at all. His cousin - an older boy, lighter-haired, green-eyed, name of Sammy - had come roaring into town in his classic black car and taken Dean away, and Rory hadn’t hear from him since. She’d never dared mention him to the Foresters, and they’d never talked about him either.

Was that possible? Was it really Dean?

He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, enjoying the sun, and his skin was more tan than she remembered, his hair longer, a little shaggier, but it still looked soft to the touch. Maybe it was someone who looked just like him? No, no one else had that mole right where he had it. That was too much of a coincidence. Rory’s chest tightened. He was even more beautiful than she remembered.

After a moment, Dean opened his eyes and sat up straighter, picked up his textbook. He reached into the backpack beside him - he was still using the same ratty backpack? - and drew out several highlighters. He was about to uncap one with his teeth, and then his face lit up with a smile. Rory knew that smile. He used to smile at her like that, before Jess, before everything went wrong.

He called out, “Hey Jess, over here!” Same voice, a little deeper. “Jess, I’m here!”

Rory jumped, scanned the surroundings for her other ex-boyfriend, but slender, dark, and brooding was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a long-legged blonde girl plopped down on the grass beside Dean and leaned in for a kiss. That Dean would even date a girl named Jess after he’d so thoroughly despised Jess Mariano was a surprise, but then Dean was apparently a student at Stanford, so maybe Rory hadn’t known him as well as she thought.

Well, he’d moved on, and so had she. She could be polite and friendly without causing a scene. Rory took a deep breath and started toward him.

“Hey, Dean,” she called out.

Dean didn’t react to his name, laughing at something his girlfriend had said.

Rory went to call out again, and a hand came down on her shoulder.

“Finally I got an answer,” Paris said. “Come on - those girls forgot where they were going to meet us and have already gone to get food. I got directions to the restaurant.”

“But --” Rory protested.

Paris’s grip on her shoulder was ironclad, and she started dragging. “We can have the campus tour later. Let’s go.”

“But I just saw my --”

“Double time, Gilmore.”

Rory could only follow along helplessly. She glanced over her shoulder, but Dean had vanished behind a crowd of students.

2.

 

“This is a really bad idea, Lane.” Rory clutched her flashlight tightly.

“It’s Halloween in Stars Hollow. We do the trunk-or-treat in the town square every year. We’re not little kids anymore. It’s time we have some real fun.” Lane smiled over her shoulder and nearly took a low-hanging bough to the temple.

“But a haunted hotel? Seriously? We could be helping Mom and Sookie out with their haunted hotel right now.” It was cold, and Rory could see her breath puffing in the air ahead of her, like misty comic book speech bubbles. She wrapped her arms around herself and tip-toed after Lane.

Lane crashed through the underbrush with enthusiastic abandon.

“Shouldn’t we be more stealthy or something?” Rory asked. “We might scare the ghosts away.”

“I doubt we’ll scare them,” Lane said. She sounded positively gleeful.

“I’m not sure I really want to be scared by them.”

“Oh please - you’ve complained about the lameness and sameness of the Stars Hollow Halloween Haunted House all month long. We’re going to get some real scares in.” Lane paused, scanned the horizon, and abruptly made a forty-five-degree turn.

Rory sighed. “Do you even know where we’re going?”

“Absolutely,” Lane said. “We’re going to the --”

“It’s the Millford Inn, I’m sure of it,” a man said.

Lane halted abruptly. Rory stopped right behind her and almost toppled them both over. They ducked behind a tree and doused their flashlights, stared at the two old cars parked just outside a decrepit wooden building that greatly resembled the Dragonfly before its renovation.

Two men - one slender, with a Southern accent, the other older and heavier and wearing a baseball cap - stood over a map spread out on the hood of one car, flashlights bobbing.

“Garth, that’s what you said about the last three fire hazards we ventured into. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen all of Connecticut at this rate. The ghost strikes at precisely 11:11. We need to get this done before then,” the older man said.

Garth insisted. “This is it. I know it.”

“That’s what you said last time --”

Garth swung around and aimed his flashlight up at the broken porch. “It says Millford Inn.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you just say so in the first place? Idjit.”

“I’m not stupid, Bobby,” Garth said. “I went to college, you know. And dental school.”

“College don’t make a man smart,” Bobby grumbled. He folded up the map and shoved it into his pocket.

“It does make him mighty good at reading,” Garth said. “So, where’s the body?”

“Somewhere out back, best as the legends say.” Bobby skirted around to the back of the car and popped the trunk. “What time is it?”

Rory immediately went to squint at her watch, but it was too dark to read.

One of the windows shattered.

Lane screamed.

Wood debris rained down at them.

“Who’s there?” Bobby demanded.

“I think it’s ghost o’clock,” Garth said.

What happened next was a blur. One moment Rory was cowering beside the tree with Lane, though whether they were hiding from Bobby and Garth or something else Rory wasn’t sure. Then the air went arctic, and Rory thought she could hear her damp hair freezing.

“Where’s the shovel?” Garth asked.

“Who’s there?” Bobby shouted again.

Lane screamed. A spectral girl hovered over them, translucent hands outstretched. Rory screamed.

Men crashed through the underbrush. A shotgun went off. Lane screamed again.

Before Rory could scream, the spectral girl swiped at her. Rory flung a hand up to cover her face. Nothing happened. Rory peered between her fingers. Rage contorted the spectral girl’s face, and she swiped again.

Lane screamed, and then Bobby was there. He fired the shotgun again, and the girl vanished.

“Over here,” Garth said. “I got a salt circle laid down.”

Bobby grabbed Rory and Lane each by an arm and hauled them through the underbrush to a patch of dirt where there was, indeed, a circle of salt. He pushed them inside of it.

“Don’t leave, and don’t break the circle. Garth, you ready?”

“I got the shovel. Let’s go end this thing.”

And the two men dashed around the side of the hotel.

“Lane, what the hell is going on?”

Lane clung to Rory and whimpered, reciting a prayer over and over again. Rory wrapped an arm around her and kept her close, darted a nervous glance around them. Where was the ghost? It had been a ghost, hadn’t it? She hadn’t brought her cell phone. She ought to call for help.

And there it was, the spectral girl, thin and young-looking, wearing a 1940’s house dress like Rory had worn at the dance marathon all those years ago. She floated toward them, and Lane went silent, paralyzed with fear. The girl snarled, swiped at them, but she came up short, as if against an invisible wall. Rory looked down. The salt line. The girl couldn’t cross it.

“Get back!” she yelled.

The girl started circling them, stalking, right up against the salt line. Her eyes glowed yellow, predatory, and Lane was weeping silently into Rory’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” Rory said. “We’ll be safe. I’m sure those two men will protect us.”

The girl threw back her head and screamed, and then she lunged at the circle. Rory brought a hand up to ward her off, but before the girl hit the salt line, she went up in flames. Rory stared at the spot where she’d been floating, stunned. It took her a moment to find her voice.

“She’s gone now,” Rory said.

Lane dared to lift her head. “Really?”

“All gone.” Rory smiled.

Garth and Bobby trotted around to the front of the hotel, Garth carrying a dirty, damp shovel and Bobby still carrying a shotgun.

“You ladies all right?” Garth asked. He aimed his flashlight at them.

“Fine, I suspect, thanks to you,” Rory said. She shielded her eyes with one hand.

“You’re welcome,” Bobby muttered. “Now we need to get the hell out of here.”

Garth frowned, started toward them without lowering the flashlight. “What’s that you’re wearing there?”

Rory looked down at herself, puzzled. “Just my Yale hoodie and a pair of jeans.”

“No, your bracelet.” Garth waggled his flashlight and almost blinded Rory.

She looked down. It was the charm Dean had given her for her birthday years ago. She’d been struck with nostalgia after seeing him over Spring Break and dug it out. “This? This was a homemade gift.”

But Garth held out a hand, so Rory did the same, let him turn her wrist over and shine a light on the charm. He whistled. “Check this out, Bobby - it’s an all-charm. These are kinda hard to find. Only place I know of where to find them is that place outside of Yellowstone.”

“That place went out of business years ago,” Bobby said. He looked Rory up and down. “Where did you get this?”

“From an old boyfriend,” Rory said, drawing her hand back defensively. “Why?”

“What was his name?” Bobby asked.

“Dean,” Lane said helpfully.

Bobby raised his eyebrows. “Dean? About six-foot-two, devil-may-care smile, green eyes and a black leather jacket?”

“Dean didn’t have green eyes, no,” Rory said. “But the rest sounds right.”

“Dean who?” Garth asked.

“Winchester,” Bobby said. “He never struck me as the type to be able to charm a Yale girl.”

Rory shook her head. “Forester. His last name was Forester.”

“Huhn,” Bobby said. “Forester. Right.” He sounded amused and skeptical. Why would he care about Dean’s last name? “Garth, we better roll. You, young lady - you never take that bracelet off.”

“We can step outside the circle now?” Lane asked.

“Yes,” Garth said gently. “You ladies want a ride back into town?”

“Yes,” Rory said, but Lane said, “No.”

“Garth,” Bobby said. “Let’s get moving.”

“Stay safe, ladies.” Garth saluted and climbed into his car. Bobby peeled out in a squeal of tires and a spray of dirt, and then Garth followed. Rory watched them go. Later that night she couldn’t sleep, so she hit up Google in search of information on her charm. Apparently all the different symbols on it would ward off ghosts, prevent demonic possession, prevent hexes by witches, and bring the protection of angels. Rory remembered the time she’d lost it, how angry Dean had seemed. Looking back on it, maybe instead of angry he’d been afraid. Rory wondered why.

3.

Rory came awake when the car spluttered to a halt. She rubbed her eyes and sat up, blinked. Smoke billowed from under the hood.

“Dammit.” Lorelei didn’t sound as angry as Rory thought she’d be, given how impatient she’d been to get back home.

“Mom, what happened?”

“It started making funny noises a few miles back, but I thought we’d at least make it to a service station.” Lorelei sighed and climbed out of the car. She’d had least had the foresight to pull off to the shoulder while the car still had some life left in it.

Rory followed her, and together they managed to get the hood propped open without burning themselves. The smoke - white, thick, and sharp-scented - rushed to meet them.

“Dean didn’t happen to teach you anything useful about cars, did he?” Lorelei asked.

“Nope.”

“Didn’t think so. All right, strip down to your underwear and flag us down some help.” Lorelei pushed Rory toward the highway.

“Mom!” Rory cried, scandalized.

Lorelei put on an aggrieved expression. “Okay, I’ll do it in your place.” She started to unbutton her cardigan.

“Or you could use your cell phone and call Triple A,” Rory said, waggling her own.

Before Lorelei could make a smart remark, the rumble of a classic car engine startled them both. They turned.

Rory had seen a black car like that before, the day Dean left town. She couldn’t help but think her poor treatment of him was the reason he’d never come back, not even to visit, after his family emergency, was solved. That he’d never come to visit his parents was odd, but they had moved at the end of that school year themselves, never to be heard from again.

The car parked behind Lorelei’s, and the doors swung open as one.

The driver was older than Lorelei, dark and ruggedly handsome, reminiscent of Luke, but there was a sensuality to his features Rory would never have imagined seeing in Luke. And the passenger was - Dean’s cousin Sammy, the one who’d taken him away. Rory remembered he’d been rather [frosty](http://ficsco-and-nagi.livejournal.com/6491.html) while she said her goodbyes to Dean.

“You ladies having car trouble?” the driver asked.

Lorelei nodded. “Yes. Please don’t be axe murderers.”

The driver smiled and raised his hands to show he was unarmed. “We’re not axe murderers. We are mechanics, though.”

Lorelei smiled back at him. “Well, then this is my lucky day. Sort of. Lucky would be my car not breaking at all.”

Rory smiled tentatively. “Hi. It’s Sammy, right?”

The driver frowned, glanced at his passenger. “You know these ladies, son?”

Sammy’s expression was unreadable. “We were never introduced. They knew Dean, I think, while he was doing that stint in Connecticut.”

Realization dawned on Lorelei’s face. “I thought that car looked familiar. How’s Stanford? You almost done?”

“Pardon?” the driver asked, incredulous.

Lorelei shrugged. “I overheard you two when Dean was picking up his [last paycheck](http://ficsco-and-nagi.livejournal.com/2906.html) is all. You got a full ride to Stanford, right?”

Rory was confused. The one she’d seen at Stanford was Dean, not Sammy. Maybe Dean had been there because of Sammy?

The driver cast Sammy a dark look. “Son --”

“Dad,” Sammy said tightly, “how about we fix the car and talk about this later?”

They had a silent stare-down, during which time Lorelei and Rory exchanged winces and the realization that their attempts at being friendly with a pseudo-familiar person had instead caused trouble.

Sammy’s father broke the stare without losing the contest. “All right. Get the tools.”

Sammy ducked around to the trunk of the car, then returned with a battered black metal toolbox. He and his father approached the engine warily, waving the smoke away. Sammy wrinkled his nose, but his father sniffed the air thoughtfully.

“Looks like you’re out of water, mostly. This’ll be done in a jiffy,” Sammy’s father said. He clapped his son on the back. “You got this one?”

“Yeah.” Sammy crouched down and popped open the toolbox, rummaged around inside. Rory edged closer to him, curious. He was wearing a leather jacket, just like the one Dean used to wear, and he was wearing some kind of necklace on a black leather cord, same as Dean. Rory had seen the pendant, only once, a weird horned figure, brass. She wondered what Sammy was hiding beneath his collar.

“I’ll go get some water.” Sammy’s father started back toward his big black car.

“Thanks for helping us, really,” Lorelei said, following him.

That earned her a faint, amused smile. “Just doing our job.”

“I know, but you didn’t have to stop. Most people wouldn’t have.” Lorelei tucked her hands into her pockets, smiled brightly. Rory winced; she knew her mother’s flirty smile.

“Helping people is what we do,” Sammy’s father said. He reached in the passenger window, rummaged around, and came up with a half-full water bottle.

“I’m Lorelei, by the way.” She offered a hand.

He shook it. “John. Apparently you already know my boy, Sam.”

“We don’t know him, exactly. He came through town a few times to visit Dean. I’d see him reading at Luke’s or in the park,” Lorelei said. “Got good taste in books, your boy. Rory would approve.”

She waved. “That’s me.”

“Rory,” John said, testing the name. “Hey Sam, how often did you go visit Dean?”

Sam straightened up. He had a smear of grease across his nose. “Not too often, sir.”

Dean had sometimes called his father ‘Sir’. Not many boys did that these days. Rory studied Sam, curious. He looked nothing like his father -- or like his cousin, for that matter.

John made a low sound of disbelief. “In all those times you visited Dean, you never mentioned any of his friends.” There was a pointed edge to his voice that Rory didn’t understand.

“Rory and Dean were more than friends, actually,” Lorelei said, and Rory flinched. Sam did the same.

“More?” John echoed.

“We dated for a couple of years,” Rory said. She cast Sam a wary look, expecting his frosty demeanor to return, but he just looked pained.

John marched over to Sam, thrust the water bottle at him. “Dated?”

Sam lowered his gaze and turned back to the engine.

“Yeah,” Rory said. “Dean was a really great boyfriend.”

John raised an eyebrow. “Really?” He looked Rory up and down. “How old are you?”

She told him.

John’s hands curled into fists. “And tell me, was Dean a _respectful_ boyfriend?”

It took a moment for the implication to sink in. Rory blushed to the roots of her hair. Sam had gone very still, like a gazelle hoping to avoid a lion’s gaze.

“Of course,” Lorelei said, tone sharp. “I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

John swallowed hard. “Good.” The word came out forced, like it wasn’t what he wanted to say but he said it anyway. “How’s that engine coming, _Sam?_ ”

Sam flinched like he’d been struck. “Almost finished, Sir.”

Rory glanced at her mother. All traces of flirting were gone. Lorelei had her thinking cap on, was puzzling something out very intently. Then she straightened up, put on her polite smile, the one she used to deal with her mother’s friends in the DAR.

“Rory got into Yale,” Lorelei said, and she threw an arm around Rory’s shoulder for a quick, proud hug. “Sam got into Stanford on a full ride, right? You must be so proud of him.” She called out to Sam, “What are you majoring in?”

“Pre-law,” Sam said, distracted.

Rory lit up. “Really? That’s cool. I’m majoring in journalism.” She glanced at John, but he looked anything but proud. In fact, he looked furious.

“Son,” John started.

Sam straightened up, dusted off his hands. He said to Lorelei, “Fire it up, see how it runs.”

Lorelei nodded and climbed into the driver’s seat. Rory remained standing beside the car, watching their two rescuers. John caught Sam by the shoulder, tugged him around and leaned in to whisper something fast and fierce. Sam bowed his head, defeated, but he nodded and said another “Yes, Sir.”

The engine turned over smoothly.

Lorelei cheered. She stepped out of the car. “Thank you so much! You’re a genius.”

Sam shook his head, looking embarrassed. “It was nothing.”

“Is there anything we can do, to properly express our gratitude?” Lorelei asked.

John shook his head. “Like I said, we’re just doing our job. C’mon, son, we’re burning daylight.”

Sam packed up the toolbox. “You ladies drive safe.”

“We will,” Lorelei said. “And listen, if you’re ever in Stars Hollow, you can have a night at the Dragonfly Inn, on the house.”

“Thank you kindly,” John said, and inclined his head. He took the toolbox from Sam and went to put it in the trunk.

Sam wiped his hands on his jeans, and was it Rory’s imagination, or did he look nervous? “What happened to Harvard?”

Rory blinked. “Pardon?”

“It’s just - I thought your big dream was always Harvard.”

“It was,” Rory said. “And I got in. But...things change.”

Shadows darkened Sam’s eyes. Up close, Rory could see they were a lovely shade of green.

“Yeah,” he said. “Things change.”

“Son,” John called sharply. He was already in the driver’s seat, poking his head out the window.

“Say hi to Lane and Miss Patty for me,” Sam said, and he hurried over to the big black car.

Rory frowned, confused. How did he even know them? But then the car was pulling onto the highway, blasting Creedence Clearwater Revival, and in a few moments Rory and Lorelei couldn’t even see their tail lights.

“That was educational,” Lorelei said, getting back in the car.

“What do you mean?” Rory scrambled into the passenger seat.

“I’ll tell you all about it. Let’s get home.”

4.

Pen? Check. Notebook? Check. Rory patted herself down for her digital recorder. If only she’d learned shorthand. Then she’d never need her recorder and if the power went out but the story was still going, she’d be the one getting the scoop. Politicians kept talking even when the power went out. They had minions to light myriad candles and everything. A little candlelight, some handy shorthand skills, and she could have the story every time. Rory sighed and patted herself down again. Where was that stupid recorder? She glanced at her wristwatch. The press conference began in half an hour, and she still had to finish her background reading, find something real to consume besides coffee, and make her way across town.

Rory scanned her surroundings. The café was nearly empty of customers and staff alike. She missed Luke’s. What did a girl have to do to get coffee in this city? She patted her pockets down again, but the recorder was nowhere to be found, so she started pawing through her purse.

A sound filled the café, just for a moment, like giant beating wings. Rory lifted her head, puzzled, scanning for an open window or door. A man stood just beside her table, wearing a long tan overcoat. Beneath the coat his suit was rumpled, his tie askew. He had one hand outstretched, and from his fingers dangled a leather cord, at the end of which hung a brass pendant. Rory frowned. She’d seen it before. She hadn’t seen it in years, but she’d remember that horned head till the day she died. Dean Forester had worn it every day no matter the occasion. She was pretty sure he’d been wearing it beneath his starched white shirt and bowtie and coattails on the day of her cotillion. That someone else had one just like it was a bizarre coincidence.

The man stood there, dangling the pendant, his head tilted at a quizzical angle, like a bird.

“Is it going to do something?” Rory asked.

The man started, turned toward her. His expression was utterly blank, but he had brilliantly blue eyes. “Pardon?”

“The necklace,” Rory said. She drew back when he fixed his gaze on her; it was like a laser making a beeline for her soul. “You’re looking at it like it’s the key to Fort Knox.”

“It’s not the key to any fort,” the man said, and Rory frowned. While she realized not everyone was quite as hip to pop culture as the newest generations of the Gilmores were, that allusion should have been readily apparent. Maybe he just took things literally.

“Oh,” Rory said.

“It will help me find my father,” the man said.

Daddy issues. Rory knew all about those. “Oh. Well - good luck with that.”

“Thank you, but it is not a matter of luck,” the man said, very seriously.

“What kind of necklace is that?” Rory asked.

The man returned to staring at it fixedly, and Rory relaxed at his scrutiny leaving her.

“One-of-a-kind. It’s very special.”

“I’ve seen one like it before,” Rory said. “Are you sure you have the right one?”

It was the wrong thing to say. The man turned back to her. “There is only one. I would know. What makes you think there is another?”

“I saw it, once.” Rory smiled weakly. “A guy I knew. He wore it.”

The man took a step toward her and tilted his head, studying her. Rory had the distinct notion that he was counting her teeth or something equally creepy.

“You’re Rory.” And the man stepped back.

She wished she still had the rape whistle they’d given her on her first day at Yale. Or the pepper spray Mrs. Kim had given her. “How did you know that?”

The man looked her up and down. “You are...a reporter?”

“Yes. And you didn’t answer my question.”

The man pocketed the necklace. “That explains a lot.” His tone was no longer gravely serious; he sounded lighter, pleased by this new discovery.

Rory zipped up her purse and shouldered it. She’d be ready to run at a moment’s notice. “What does it explain?”

“Dean has had short-term relationships with many women, but the only meaningful ones he’s had have always been with journalism majors. Reporters.” The man eyed her up and down again.

Rory drew back. “Dean? You mean...Dean Forester? You’re friends with him?” She didn’t imagine Dean would let anyone but a very close friend anywhere near his necklace. He’d never let her near it. She’d only ever seen it once when they’d become particularly disheveled during a make-out session, and even then he’d tucked it away immediately, refused to comment on it. She’d assumed it was a gift from an ex-girlfriend, perhaps that Beth person Lane had found out about.

“Forester?” the man echoed. He narrowed his eyes, and Rory was suddenly breathless, overcome with the sensation of having been metaphysically turned inside out.

“How strange.” The man frowned. “The person you know is Dean, but for some reason he has Sam’s face.”

Rory thought back to what her mother had told her, about the strange conversation she’d overheard between Dean and his cousin Sammy that Dean’s day at Doose’s, how it sounded like they shared a father, and how Sammy had made it into Stanford. She remembered that Spring Break, so many years ago, seeing Dean on Stanford’s campus, Dean who was happy to kiss a girl named Jess and was comfortable studying a very large tome.

“I don’t understand,” she said, because what she was suspecting simply wasn’t possible.

“It is...complicated,” the man said, and his tone was a touch rueful. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Rory Gilmore. Not many people have affected the Righteous Man as you have. Despite your guilt over breaking his heart, you did not damage him irreparably, and I think his association with you was for the better.” He tucked the necklace into one of his coat pockets. “But my father is not here, and I must continue the search. Good luck to you.”

“You too,” Rory said, and then glimpsed the time on the clock over his shoulder. “Oh, no - I’m going to be late.” She fumbled her notebook and pens into her arms, and she was jolted by that sound again, giant beating wings. When she looked up, the man was gone. A single white feather lay on the floor where he’d been standing.

Rory fled from the café with as much dignity as she could muster. If, after the press conference, she drove home to Stars Hollow and dug around in her old room for her Dean box, it was no one’s business but her own.

5.

 

“Hey Gilmore, get down to the bullpen!”

Rory popped up to peer over the top of her cubicle. “What’s going on?” As much as she liked politics, the election mudslinging had begun far too early, and the mere thought of scrambling to cover more election excitement exhausted her.

“We need all hands on deck.” Beckett, one of the junior copy editors, beckoned from the doorway.

Rory rolled her eyes. “What’s the GOP done now?”

“It’s not them,” Beckett said. “Come quick - you have to see this. It’s like Pulp Fiction gone gay!”

Pulp Fiction already had gay moments in it. Apparently Beckett hadn’t seen the entire movie.

“What part of Pulp Fiction?” Rory asked.

“The diner part,” Beckett said.

Rory hurried down to the bullpen, taking her pad and pen with her, because she was a reporter. The other reporters were crowded around the flat screen against the wall, staring in awe and horror.

Some of the taller reporters shuffled to let Rory in to the front. She sighed and flipped open her notepad, pen poised.

The video was grainy, shaky, probably shot on a camera phone.

A man was yelling.

“Hey, I didn’t say you could put that down!”

The pen slipped from Rory’s fingers.

“I want the whole world to know what Sam and Dean Winchester are capable of.”

Dean Forester. Rory hadn’t seen him in years, hadn’t thought of him since -- since that man in the café, the one speaking in impossibilities. Dean was taller, broader than the slender boy she remembered huddled over a textbook at Stanford. His hair was longer, and he wore a bulky jacket, likely army surplus. And then the camera swung around, and there was Sam, his cousin-brother-someone, wearing a similar jacket and armed with a gun. He too looked older, harder, but no less handsome.

“That all of them?” Sam asked.

“All but one,” Dean said, and raised the gun.

The boy behind the camera sobbed. “No, please no.”

Dean fired.

Rory’s heart stopped. The camera tipped over sideways and took Rory’s world with it, but then Dean scooped up the camera, and Sam crouched down beside him. They crowded in close, like a pair of teenagers posing for a MySpace profile picture, and grinned.

Sam spoke. “Good night, St. Louis. You’ve been a wonderful crowd. Grab your socks and hose, Iowa. You’re next.” And he winked.

Rory wanted to throw up.

Chapman, the chief editor, waded into the crowd. “All right, break it up. I’ll assign this story out to one of you. Take a couple of researchers for back-up, though. I hear these boys have a pretty long rap sheet. I want to know what brand of diapers they wore then they were babies, understand?”

Yamagachi was on her feet in an instant. “Give it to me, Boss. I got this.”

Rory turned around. “No, let me have it.”

Yamagachi frowned at her. “What? No. You’re in politics.”

Rory reached into her pocket with trembling hands, fumbled open her wallet. “I should have this story.” She pawed through the pictures, past Logan, past Jess, past pictures of Lane and her mother and her father and grandparents to the picture she always swore she didn’t have. “Because of this.” She held it up.

Chapman squinted at it. He lowered his glasses, leaned in, and squinted again. “Is that --?” He glanced over Rory’s shoulder at the television screen were mugshots were on display, several years old. “No way. You knew him? Judging by your body language, you didn’t just _know_ him.”

“We dated. For two and a half years.” Rory lowered the picture.

Yamagachi snatched it out of her hands. “Let me see.”

“Hey!” Rory tried to grab it back, but Yamagachi spun out of reach.

“Is it even the same guy?”

Beckett guffawed. “Gilmore dated a serial killer?”  
  
“He wasn’t a serial killer back then,” Rory snapped. She chased after Yamagachi. Chapman intercepted her and plucked the picture out of her grasp, returned it to Rory.

“You’re not impartial,” Chapman said. “But this is an inside scoop no one else will have. Yamagachi, the story is yours. Get over to Des Moines, as fast as you can.”

Yamagachi cast Rory a triumphant smile.

Chapman added, “Take Gilmore with you.”  


*

Rory clutched the strap of her purse. She should have just kept her mouth shut. Now everyone at the office was going to look at her like she was some kind of freak-magnet. But she couldn’t believe it - Dean had never been violent, and what little she knew of Sam, he hadn’t been either. Sure, Dean had gone skeet shooting with his dad one time, but that didn’t make him a killer. Whoever those two men, they weren’t the Dean and Sam she knew, not really. Thankfully, Yamagachi had the sense to keep quiet about her scoop-of-a-lifetime story while they were wading through airport security. Once on the plane, Rory settled in to read. Finally, she was getting to the Hunter S. Thompson Dean had tried to convince her to read all those years ago. A little _Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail_ seemed the most apropos for a political journalist.

When the plane was in the air and all the passengers settled in, tuned in to their portable electronics and complacently sipping sodas, Yamagachi drew out her notepad and pen.

“So, Rory Gilmore, tell me, how did you first meet the infamous Sam Winchester?”  
Rory cleared her throat. “When I met him, he told me his name was Dean Forester.”

Yamagachi raised her eyebrows and leaned in, intrigued. “Really? And what about his brother?”

“I didn’t know they were brothers.” Rory bit her lip. Her mother had suspected they were really brothers. “When I met him, he said his name was Sam, and that he was Dean’s older cousin. He didn’t come to town very often.”

Yamagachi knew shorthand, naturally. She barely looked down at her pad while she wrote. “So they used each other’s names. Weird. What was Sam like? Or rather, Dean.”

Rory shrugged helplessly. “He was a normal guy. He liked cars and music and...guy stuff. He played softball and watched Battle Bots and he was nice to me. He was a really good boyfriend.”

Yamagachi looked skeptical, but she kept taking notes. “Did you ever meet the rest of his family?”

“Besides his cousin? Sure. He lived with his parents and a little sister - Clara. She was cute.” Rory toyed with the hem of her blouse. “His mom cooked, which was nice. My mom didn’t cook much - it was kind of dangerous when she tried.” She smiled weakly.

“His parents?” Yamagachi frowned. She paused in her note-taking and shook her head. “No.” She reached into her laptop bag and dragged out a file, flipped it open. “No, their mother died when Sam - the younger brother - was only six months old. House fire. Their father, one John Winchester, ex-marine, raised them both. It was a pretty transient lifestyle, dozens of schools over the years. Dean dropped out, got his GED, but Sam - Sam was smart. Got a full-ride scholarship to Stanford. Almost finished his bachelor’s degree, but his live-in girlfriend, Jessica Moore, was killed in a fire, just like his mother.”

Rory’s throat closed. She remembered Dean, sitting on the grass with a textbook across his lap, calling out to a blonde girl named Jess. She remembered Sam and his father John, helping Lorelei with her car.

“John Winchester - he was a mechanic, right? Before he went all transient,” Rory said.

Yamagachi nodded. “Did Dean tell you that?”

“His father, Randy Forester, was a mechanic,” Rory said. “And so was Dean. He liked fixing up old cars. Now that you mention it, Randy Forester was an ex-marine, too. Served in Vietnam.”

“As did John Winchester. Interesting.” Yamagachi leafed through her notes some more. “Maybe he and Randy Forester served together. I know a guy at the VA - I can have him check it out.” She glanced at Rory out of the corner of her eye. “You really think this Dean Forester you knew is Sam Winchester now?”

“They look the same,” Rory said. “It’s kind of uncanny. Right down to the mole. But Dean - he wasn’t a serial killer.”

“People change.”

“Not that much.” Rory shook her head.

Yamagachi hummed under her breath. “Hey, where did you go to high school?”

“Stars Hollow, Connecticut.”

“That’s a point in your favor. According to Sam Winchester’s school records, he spent his sophomore, junior, and half of his senior year at Stars Hollow High. Got excellent grades. Finished his senior year in New York City, of all places. Sound like the Dean Forester you know?”

“Not really.” Rory thought back to that disastrous dinner with her grandparents, when her grandfather had interrogated Dean about his grades. “Dean was smart, but...Stanford smart? No.”

“Sounds like someone got their wires crossed. Or maybe he just lied about his grades.” Yamagachi flipped the file shut and stowed it away. “Maybe if we get to Iowa and they’re caught alive, you can talk to your old flame again, find out what’s what.”

“I don’t think Dean would really want to talk to me,” Rory said. She didn’t want to have this conversation. She could only imagine what her mother was thinking, watching the news back home. The entire town either had to be terrified at having had a serial killer in their midst, or in denial.

“Why’s that?”

“Well, I kinda broke his heart.”

Yamagachi chuckled, leaned back in her seat. “Hey, maybe you breaking his heart is what turned him psycho.”

Rory crossed her arms over her chest defensively. “That’s not funny.”

“Just saying --”

“Not funny.”

“Sorry.” Yamagachi put on a straight face. She was uncannily good at controlling her facial expressions like that. “Tell me, what was your old boyfriend really like?”

Rory wondered which memory she dared to share. After several moments’ thought, she settled on the tale of Dean giving her a homemade bracelet for her birthday, and how she always wore the charm. That she wore the charm because of a stranger named Garth instead of Dean, well, Yamagachi didn’t need to know that.

*

When they landed in Des Moines, they got the news - the Winchester brothers had been brought into custody in nearby Ankeny, attempted escape, and been killed. Violently. Messily. Their killing spree was at an end. Yamagachi actually looked sympathetic at the news, and after they rented a car, Yamagachi drove. The town was already swarming with reporters, but Sheriff Osborne was keeping them out of the local station until the FBI arrived. He looked exhausted and haunted, but he was staunch in his refusal to tell anyone anything or let anyone in.

Rory used her short-person skills to weasel her way up to the front of the barricade. She fished in her wallet for the old photo of her and Dean, then leaned over the barrier.

“Sheriff Osborne!”

He turned toward her, ready with an automatic dismissal, but she’d tucked her press badge out of sight.

She widened her eyes and beckoned. Dean had always joked that her big eyes were a serious weapon. Sure enough, Sheriff Osborne came toward her.

She held out the photo. “Will you let me see him? Please?”

Osborne studied the photo for a long moment, then studied Rory. “It got pretty messy in there.”

Rory lowered her voice. “Sheriff, I’ve heard what all the reporters are saying, but I don’t believe any of it. I know he was a good person, and I just -- I want to say goodbye.”

That earned her raised eyebrows. “You don’t believe any of it? Surely you saw the videos on the news --”

“I did. But the man I knew - he wasn’t a monster.” She kept her tone earnest and sincere. It was true. She didn’t believe Dean Forester was a killer.

Something must have struck home, because Osborne nodded and lifted the barrier for her to come through. He led her into the station, but instead of heading for the morgue, he took her to his office and closed the door.

“Let me get this straight - you know those boys?”

Rory knew she was fudging the truth, but she nodded. “Yeah. We dated, back in high school. Well, I only dated one of them, obviously.”

“And you - you know about the monsters, then?”

Rory had no clue what he was talking about, but she nodded anyway.

“Then I’ll tell you so you don’t have to worry - the bodies I got lying in the morgue don’t belong to the Winchester brothers. Not the real ones. Whatever came in here, they wore those boys’ faces, but they weren’t the real thing.”

Rory was reminded of the man in the café a few years ago, who said she knew a Dean who wore Sam’s face. But she kept her expression earnest and a little anxious. “What do you mean?”

“The real boys, they escaped, and they saved me from those black-goo clones. I couldn’t tell you where to find them, but they’re safe. So don’t you worry, little lady.” Osborne actually patted Rory on the shoulder. Maybe she was overdoing it with the big eyes. Instead, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank you,” she said. “For telling me. I promise not to tell anyone.”

“You’re a smart kid. Now, I’d get going. I wouldn’t want to be around here when the FBI arrive.” Osborne smiled and led her back out of the station.

Rory headed back to the rental car in a daze. Dean and Sam were still alive. Their deaths were a lie. But then their deaths in Colorado four years before had been a lie, as had Dean’s (Sam’s?) two years before that.

“Well?” Yamagachi demanded. “What did you get?”

“Nothing,” Rory said. “They were dead. He refused to let me see the corpses. Too messy.”

“You all right, Gilmore?”

“Let’s just find a hotel for the night, and we’ll post our story in the morning.”  
Yamagachi nodded sympathetically. “Okay. Let’s go.”

*

At the office, no one asked Rory about her dead serial killer boyfriend, or even really talked to her in the weeks that followed the Winchester Brothers’ spree killings. In fact, no one talked to her at all, and that suited her just fine. No one came by her cubicle to read over her shoulder, and as long as she posted her stories on time, no one cared if she spent all her free time trying to find out everything she could about the Winchester brothers. In her search she stumbled across a cult fantasy novel series about two brothers named Sam and Dean, which was an interesting coincidence but not actually helpful. Apart from digging up news articles about their prior escapades - torture and murder, bank robbery, breaking and entering an anthropology museum - she didn’t find anything new, or any hint that they were still alive, and if they were still alive, where they might be.

Which was why, naturally, when she finally ran into them, it was after she’d given up on finding them. They were in a dingy roadside diner when Rory was on her way home to visit her mother. She’d spotted them as soon as she came in. They looked just as they had in the news clips of the spree killings the stations had played over and over again. Rory had watched those too many times on YouTube, searching for any hint of the Dean and Sam she knew.

They were tucked into a corner booth, so she chose the one beside them but sat with her back to them. She could hear them arguing in low voices.

“We should have taken Cas with us,” Dean was saying, voice tight with impatience. His voice was deeper than Rory remembered.

Sam said, “He’s in no condition to help us.” His voice was the same as Rory remembered from that Connecticut roadside all those years ago, just a little deeper, rougher.

“But to just leave him there with Meg?” Dean sounded skeptical of the notion, and aggrieved by it.

“Sammy,” Sam said, and Rory was baffled, “Cas messed you up. Your wall was rubble.”

“He messed me up, but he saved me, too,” Dean insisted. “We might need him against Dick Roman and the rest of the Leviathans --”

“No.” Sam’s tone brooked no argument. “They already messed him up once, they’ll probably mess him up again.”

“Then what are we going to do? Go to Crowley?” Dean snorted in disbelief.

“Shut up and eat your salad, Sammy,” Sam growled.

“Whatever.” There was a rustle of cloth, and then Dean was heading toward the restrooms.

Rory couldn’t help herself. She called out.

“Hey, Dean.”

Dean paused and turned to her. Confusion furrowed his brow. “I’m sorry, were you talking to me?”

Rory offered a small smile and waved. “Yeah, Dean. It’s me.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. You have me mistaken for someone else.” He turned to continue on his way.

Before Rory realized what she was doing, she was lunging out of her seat, latching onto his wrist. “Dean, it’s me.” Why was he brushing her off like this? “We dated in high school.”

He paused and studied her for a long moment. Then he drew his hand out of her grip gently and shook his head. “No. We never dated in high school.”

Rory was floored. Maybe Yamagachi was right - the boy she’d dated had been some freak coincidence, an eerie look-alike for a serial killer who, according to the sheriff who was supposed to have shot him, wasn’t really a serial killer. But there too many coincidences. If it had only been Dean Forester who looked like a Winchester, that would have been easy to accept, but his strange, quiet cousin looking like the other Winchester? Impossible.

Rory reached up, traced the line of Dean’s jaw. No, it was him. She knew his face, the tilt of his eyes, the curve of his lips, the little mole next to his nose.

“I know it’s you, Dean. Why are you doing this?” She wasn’t in love with him still, not after all these years, but the clichés were true, a girl never forgot her first love, and when he was standing in front of her, denying that love had existed at all -- Rory couldn’t breathe.

He shook his head again, ducking away from her hand. He looked down at her, and he’d gotten even taller since she’d seen him last.

“Do you remember what I said the last time we saw each other?” he asked quietly.

They’d said so much, _I’m sorry_ and _I did love you_ and _I still love you_ and _goodbye_. There was so much they hadn’t said aloud. Rory looked up into those familiar hazel eyes and saw...a stranger. She’d never seen this solemn expression on Dean’s face before. She fell back a step. He really wasn’t Dean at all. Except he acknowledged he knew her, that he’d met her before.

The corner of Dean’s mouth curved up; amusement sparked, momentarily, in his eyes. “The last time we saw each other, standing outside the Foresters’ house, I told you that when you saw me again, I’d be a different person. I’m sorry, Rory Gilmore. I’m not Dean - I’m Sam.” He glanced at something behind Rory, then backed away.  
  
Rory watched him go, hurt and confused. He’d had Dean’s face, but underneath the surface, she hadn’t seen even a shadow of the boy she once loved.  
  
“Rory.”  
  
She jumped.  
  
Dean’s cousin Sam stood behind her, hands in his pockets. There were lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there when he’d been helping Lorelei fix her car on the side of a back Connecticut highway. That same sickly, feverish light turned his green eyes bright, and he was nibbling his bottom lip, nervous.  
  
“Sam,” she said. “Hey. So...I guess Stanford didn’t take, huh?”  
  
He laughed, softly and bitterly. “No. I was never the Stanford type.”  
  
Rory smiled tentatively. “It’s been a long time. Mom said you never took her up on her offer at the Dragonfly.”  
  
“That was probably never going to happen,” Sam said.  
  
“So...thanks for fixing our car.”  
  
“You already said that, a long time ago.” Sam stepped closer. “You look lovely, by the way. They always say if you want to know what a girl looks like in a decade or so, look at her mother, so I knew if, by some miracle, we’d lasted, I’d be a lucky man, but --” He whistled. “You’re looking good, Lorelei Gilmore.”

Rory frowned, confused. “Sam? I don’t understand --” She glanced back over her shoulder, but Dean was gone. Fingertips brushed against her jaw, guided her to turn back, and then Sam was in her space, crowding up against her, warm and lean.

“Don’t think, Rory, just feel,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes.

The kiss felt like coming home. It was that first awkward kiss in the back of Doose’s market, the heartbreak of that last kiss goodbye, and the thousand kisses in between, the elation of stolen affection and the heady rush of new lust.

Rory pulled back when she ran out of breath, blinked dazedly into a pair of familiar green eyes. There he was, the boy she’d been looking for in Dean’s hazel eyes.

“I’m sorry I never told you,” he said, low and hurried. “I wanted to tell you, but there was no way to explain, no way to make you believe --”

“Dean?” Rory asked.

He nodded once. “Yes.”

Before Rory could ask how or why, someone was tugging Dean away from her.

It was the stranger in her ex-boyfriend’s body. “It’s go time.” His expression was grim.

Dean nodded, and the other man ducked out of the diner.

“Dean?” Rory asked again.

“Close your eyes,” he said, stepping back into her space. “Don’t talk. Count to one hundred before you open your eyes.”

“But --”

He pressed a finger to her lips, hushing her, and she nodded, let her eyes slip closed. Fingers circled her wrist, tapped the little brass medallion she still wore after all these years.

“Never let it go,” Dean whispered, and Rory nodded.

A fingertip traced the line of her brow, the ridge of her nose, and then were was one last brief, chaste press of lips, a shared breath, and he was gone.

Rory barely made it to twenty before she opened her eyes. She was alone. She finished her meal in silence, ignoring the stares of the other patrons who’d watched her kiss a man who was seemingly a stranger, and she left a generous tip. Then she got in her car and headed for home. On the way, she said goodbye to the first love she never really had.


End file.
